Chapter 6: Strong Adjectives

Adjectives are words that are used to describe nouns.

Alfred was a great king.

"great" describes the noun "king",
so it is an adjective.

There are two types of adjectives in Old English:

Strong Adjectives, which are the subject of this chapter, and
weak adjectives, which we cover in the next chapter. Almost all Old English
adjectives can be either strong or weak, depending
on how they are used in a sentence. That's right: the same word is a strong
adjective in some contexts and weak in others. Fortunately the rules for determining
whether an adjective is strong or weak are very simple, and
in any event, "strong" and "weak" are just labels that tell
you what ending the adjective takes depending on the case (which, you'll
remember, marks the grammatical function) of the noun it is modifying,

Strong Adjectives can stand on their own; they do not
need a demonstrative to assist
them:

Wise kings are kind to their
subjects.

Notice there is no demonstrative
assisting the adjective. "Wise" is therefore, in this sentence, a
Strong Adjective.

If an adjective has a demonstrative
assisting it, it will be weak. If the same adjective has no demonstrative,
it will be strong. (If the sentence read: "The wise king is kind to his
subjects," "wise" would be a weak adjective).

This characteristic of Old English adjectives is important,
because there are different declensions that are used depending
on whether or an an adjective is used in a grammatically strong or weak
manner. A "declension" is simply a list of the
different endings that go on a word to indicate that it is in a certain
case (i.e., that it is fulfilling a certain grammatical function).